The Peruvian Green Velvet Tarantula’s Gift

February 17, 2014

Observatory

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

Venoms from spiders and other animals, fine-tuned by evolution to stun and paralyze prey, are an abundant source of painkillers and other drugs. But screening for useful toxins can be an arduous process.

Venoms contain many active toxins, not all of them suitable for use in humans. And once a potentially effective toxin is identified, researchers must run further tests to determine which neural pathways it might affect.

But now researchers at Yale University say they have sped up the process by using DNA cloning technology to build large libraries of spider venoms. This makes it easier to test the impact of a broad range of toxins on a particular neural pathway. They refer to the process as toxineering.

“This turns it around and says, for a particular ion channel target, can we identify, in the pharmacological diversity of the spider venom toxins, a toxin that is active against that desired target,” said Michael N. Nitabach, a physiologist at Yale and senior author of the paper, published in the journal Current Biology.

Using the process, the scientists have identified a potential new painkiller: a toxin from the venom of the Peruvian green velvet tarantula that blunts activity in an ion channel linked to both inflammation and neuropathic pain known as TRPA1.

“We chose that target because it is a key factor in both normal-functioning pain as well as pathological pain syndrome,” Dr. Nitabach said.